Read Mostly Ghostly 03 – One Night in Doom House free for 7 days. £7.99/month after - less than a paperback.
R. L. Stine's One Night in Doom House is a spooky, very silly Mostly Ghostly story for 9 year olds about a sleepover in a haunted mansion that goes badly wrong.
This is the third Mostly Ghostly book. Nicky and Tara are ghosts. They came home one night to find strangers in their house, and they're still looking for their mum and dad. Max Doyle, whose family lives there now, is the only person who can see or hear them.
The opening is sad and daft at the same time. Nicky and Tara sit in their family's old booth at Scruffy's Diner on a Saturday, hoping their parents might just walk in. Instead a biker couple sits down right on top of them. So the soup ends up in their laps!
Meanwhile Max has let his best friend Aaron talk him into spending the night at the Grover Mansion. Aaron wears swim goggles everywhere and shorts in the snow, and he wants ghost footage for a school project so he doesn't have to do the history of Paraguay.
The welcome mat says GOOD-BYE. The mailbox says DOOM HOUSE.
Inside there's green goo, a skeleton that leaps out of a coffin and some howling that sounds far too real. Max has two ghosts at home, so he's the last boy who should get scared by a haunted house. He's terrified anyway (and falls face first into the coffin, on camera).
Nicky and Max take turns telling it, and they're both funny about everything, even the scary bits. The Wilbur brothers want Max to eat yellow snow. His big brother spits a hot cookie down his best T-shirt. And Traci Wayne, the coolest girl in school, is coming round for a study date.
The shivers are very Stine. A man who shakes Max's hand with a strangely hot palm, and snow melting where he stood. A snowball that burns Tara's face. A handful of silver objects in a closet, just like the lucky pendant Max's mum gave him.
It's mostly jokes, but there's one properly creepy scene in the mansion, with floating faces and a foot whose toes have been cut off. Children who don't like gory details might want to skip a page there.
If your reader likes to be scared and laughing on the same page, this series gets the balance just right.
It makes sense to start at the beginning, though. Who Let the Ghosts Out is the first book, the night Nicky and Tara walk home and find a stranger's name on their mailbox.
A library hand-picked by an English teacher, delivered through a calm, ad-free app. If your child already loves reading, we keep up.
7-day free trial. Then £7.99/month.
